During aging or disease, such as cancer, people may lose weight unintentionally. Unwanted weight loss can have fatal outcomes. Losing body weight and muscle decreases both quality of life and survival, and there is currently no pharmacological treatment option. My project focuses on circulating factors in the blood, and how these factors can be the cause of unwanted weight loss - in part by decreasing hunger and in part by increasing metabolism to burn more energy.

In my project, I will investigate a completely new factor in the regulation of body weight, and I will untangle how a known factor increases metabolism during weight loss. Using a new method to investigate circulating factors, I will find new factors and how the biological sex affects these factors and the unwanted weight loss. By pursuing these ideas, using knowledge and data from both humans and rodents, I hope to be able to provide treatment options for patients with unwanted weight loss.